The raspberry pi is an awesome device. It’s affordable, it’s a media center, a web server, very slow and doesn’t use much electricity. It’s also a very good looking piece of hardware. Fits your living room!
This post is about how mine is configured!
The services
- Xbmc (installed as raspbmc): a powerful media center, running on Debian.
- Transmission: A minimalistic torrent client.
- CouchPotato: Software that searches the movies you want and starts to download them as soon as they come available.
- BitTorrent Sync: Dropbox like service, easy way to backup folders on multiple computers.
- Samba: Share a hard disk to the local network.
The place
My pi lives next to my TV. It’s powered by a 5V 2A power supply. It has a 8 gb sd card and their is a 2 TB external usb hard drive attached.
Connected
I use Putty to modify raspbmc via ssh, Yatse android app to control Xbmc. When needed I can connect an external keyboard because I still have 1 usb port over.
Security
As you could possibly open up some ports to the internet, you will want to secure your raspberry pi.
Install
I won’t list the complete process but refer to guides I followed.
0. Static IP
http://choorucode.com/2012/08/14/how-to-assign-a-static-ip-address-to-raspbmc/
1. Raspbmc
First we need to install raspbmc on the pi: http://www.raspbmc.com/wiki/user/windows-installation/.
2. CouchPotato, Transmission
- http://techtutes.net/post/55067052101/media-services-on-rpi#.UzWrmyiPOUl
- http://raspberry-blog.com/howto/installing-couchpotato-on-raspberry-pi/
- http://www.cylindric.net/blog/raspberrypi-adding-sabnzbd-sickbeard-and-couchpotato/
3. BitTorrent Sync
- https://createweb.be/wordpress/?p=1117
- http://jack.minardi.org/raspberry_pi/replace-dropbox-with-bittorrent-sync-and-a-raspberry-pi/
4. Enable samba
You can do this in the xbmc interface.
5. Dynamic Dns
http://www.techjawab.com/2013/06/setup-dynamic-dns-dyndns-for-free-on.html
XBMC tweaks
- By default, if there is no hdmi connected on boot, it won’t enable hdmi. That’s ridiculous!